Beyond Recognition

3

“Get out of here. Go upstairs, or watch TV or something.”

Ben had never seen the man with this particular girl before, but she wasn’t much different from any of the others-a waitress, maybe, or just a girl from the bar: big boobs and tight jeans-not much different.

The guy, who called himself Ben’s father but wasn’t, drew closer. “You listening to me, kid?” Definitely the bar. He smelled of it: cigarettes and beer. He blinked a pair of glassy eyes, unable to focus. Pot too, probably, Ben thought. He smoked a lot of the stuff. Weekends he started smoking pot with his first cup of coffee, around noon.

The man’s name was Jack Santori, and Ben owned that same last name, but not by birth. He hated the man, though hate was too soft a word.

“You told me to clean up the kitchen,” Ben protested, reminding Jack of the earlier order. He felt confused and angry. Bone tired. He wished he were eighteen instead of twelve; he wished he could walk right out the door and never come back-the same way his mother had. He missed his mother something fierce. “I washed the sheets,” he said, hoping to pick up some credit. He had been told to wash the sheets before starting in on the kitchen, and that’s just what he had done, so maybe the bastard would cut him some slack.

“Upstairs,” Jack ordered, walking unsteadily toward the fridge and rummaging on the shelves for a pair of beers. He asked the girl, “Brew?” and as she nodded her boobs jiggled. She cast a sympathetic look in Ben’s direction, but it wouldn’t help because she was new around here. She didn’t know Jack. If she lasted more than one or two nights it would be a record. Ben knew what went on down there at night; Jack was rough with them. Same way he was rough with Ben. Best thing about seeing him this drunk was he’d sleep until noon. Best thing about the girl being with him was he probably wouldn’t hit Ben in front of her. Jack tried to make out like they were friends. The man had lying down to a science.

He had married Ben’s mother when Ben was five and she was out of money. She cut hair for a living, but she had been fired. She had explained it all to Ben; she had apologized. “Jack’s a pretty nice guy, and he can provide for us.” She was proved wrong on both counts, but she was gone now, so what did it matter? Ben was stuck with the guy.

“Upstairs. Now!” Jack shouted. The girl stiffened with that tone of voice, and her boobs stuck straight out. Ben had heard that same slurred anger too often to fear it, and besides, he knew the guy wouldn’t hit him in front of her. Not the first night.

Ben turned off the water, dried his hands, and glanced at the girl. Her shirt wasn’t buttoned right. Her hair was tousled. Her lipstick was smeared, deforming her mouth. It repulsed him. He knew what they did down there in that room. He washed the sheets, after all. Every now and then he saw one of the girls walking around naked in the morning-the only good thing about them coming over. But that meant he saw the bruises too, and he knew only too well where they came from. Jack liked to pretend how he was so tough. He didn’t know that Ben occasionally heard him crying down there when he was all alone. Sobbing like a baby. If Ben hadn’t feared him so much, he might have found room to pity him.

Jack and his blond bar girl went at it most of that night, Ben unable to sleep for all the noise. He was just drifting off when the headboard started slapping the wall again like someone beating a drum, and the girl with her moaning, and everything got faster until the headboard sounded like it was going to beat a hole in the wall. She cried out like he was killing her, and then it stopped, and Ben wondered if maybe he had killed her. He seemed capable of it. There wasn’t much that Ben would put past Jack.

When morning finally showed its mercy by allowing the sun to rise, Ben got dressed and got the hell out of there before the trouble began. Trouble came with pain in that house. It was to be avoided at all costs.

The southeast neighborhood where he lived was mostly black and poor. The houses were old and beat up, the cars parked outside them, not much different. He and his mom had lived better before Jack came along, though Ben didn’t remember much about those days anymore. He’d never met his real father.

The roadside gutters were littered with soggy trash, and there was a smell like garbage because the stray dogs got into the black plastic bags every trash day, which was Wednesday. Most of the houses showed chipped paint and carried moss-covered roofs half-rotten from the long wet winters. Occasionally a building was condemned, its residents evicted. It seemed to happen pretty much at random. He wasn’t sure where those people went, didn’t know what would happen if Jack’s house was condemned. He couldn’t think about it. He didn’t like to think beyond tomorrow or the day after. Next week seemed an eternity away.

He climbed up the hill, the growling sound of a jet overhead, a hum of traffic from Martin Luther King Boulevard. The gangs were about the only thing Ben feared. They shot each other over stupid stuff. Ben kept to himself and walked fast. Once a kid had tried to recruit him to be a drug runner, and it was only through clever thinking that Ben had avoided the job without getting beat up for refusing. He had pulled out his glass eye, his left eye, and, holding it in the palm of his hand, had explained that with only one good eye he couldn’t see who was coming from his left, so he made an easy target. A real gross-out, the eye trick worked every time.

The glass eye was the result of a birth defect-Peter’s anomaly-and though Ben wished he had two eyes like everyone else, the trick of popping out his glass eye came in handy every now and then. Like with girls. They screamed and ran the other way, which was just fine with him. Who needed girls?

Except Emily. She didn’t count as a girl, even if she was one, technically speaking. She lived at 115A 21st Avenue East, a small purple house with dark blue trim. There was a six-foot-high metal globe of the world on her lawn, along with a plastic pink flamingo and a miniature Negro painted whiteface and holding a sign that read FORTUNES $10-TAROT-ASTROLOGY. There was a blue neon sign in the window that read YOUR FUTURE, YOUR PAST-AT LAST! There were white stars and pale blue moons painted on the purple siding. There was a flagstone path that Ben followed to the front door. He knocked twice rather than ring the bell. There was no car parked in the drive, so he assumed she didn’t have a customer.

“Come in, Ben.” Emily always knew it was him. Just how, he wasn’t sure. People doubted her powers, talked about her behind her back, but Ben knew better. Emily possessed a gift, and the gift was real.

“I didn’t see a car,” he explained. Not all of Emily’s customers arrived by car, which was why he had knocked. If she had not answered, he would not have knocked for a second time; he would have either waited up the cedar tree alongside her driveway or sneaked in the back door.

“Business will pick up,” she promised. Emily was rarely wrong about anything. She had rich brown hair, kind blue eyes, and was probably about the same age as his mother, which was old-somewhere around thirty. She wore a flowered dress with a red plastic belt, pink stockings, and red high-top sneakers. The house smelled like maple syrup. She left the door for him to shut and led the way to the kitchen, the pair of them moving with a comfortable familiarity, like mother and son-which was how Ben liked to think of it.

On the way to the kitchen they passed through the room in which she told fortunes. The ceiling was draped in parachute cloth dyed sky blue, the sheer fabric gathered around a white globe ceiling fixture that was on a dimmer always set low. Below the light was a round table with a black tablecloth and two ladderback cane-seat chairs with round black pillows for cushions. On the table was a leaded glass candle holder for a single red candle that burned at eye height so it partially blinded the customer when he or she ventured a look at the hostess. A thumb-worn deck of tarot cards was set to the left of Emily’s place, and below the lip of the table were three switches that allowed her to control the mood of the room. The most impressive special effect in her limited arsenal was the ability to project a good rendition of the summer night sky onto the parachute cloth, which she utilized as atmosphere in the event a customer wanted an astrological reading. The small gray box taped to the underside of the table alongside these switches controlled the radio-transmitter earpiece insert that Emily wore. The walls of the room were painted in a confused assortment of fat Buddhas sitting with partially clad vixens in Hindu-inspired postures and a bad rendition of Zeus with a lightning bolt, all colored in a psychedelic assortment of yellow, blue, and red.

It was the bare-breasted women that kept Ben from suggesting to Emily that she repaint the room.

“How was he last night?” she asked him, once they were into the kitchen through the swinging door.

“The same. A new girl.”

“Drunk?”

“Both of them.”

“He hit you?”

“No, not with a new girl, he wouldn’t do that.” He considered this. “Though he hit her, I think. Sounded like he did, the way she was screaming. I don’t know,” he said, not wanting to work her anger into a lather, pretending to reconsider. “It might have just been … you know, that they were … you know.” He felt himself blush. He tried to avoid mentioning the sex that went on in that room, because Emily said it was wrong of the guy to allow Ben to hear them going at it, but with walls and floors like paper there wasn’t much choice.

“I’m working on it,” she promised, as she fixed the tea. She let him drink the real thing-caffeine tea. Milk. Sugar.

“I know you are,” he answered her.

“I’m trying.”

“I know,” Ben said. He knew what she was up to. She wanted them to be together. He also knew she wouldn’t push him. She needed evidence against Jack if she was to have any chance of breaking Ben free of him. And Ben didn’t feel like giving evidence. He didn’t feel like talking to a social worker about it; he wouldn’t allow Emily to take pictures of his bruises. He had his reasons. If he offered evidence, if Jack was questioned by the police-or whoever did that kind of thing-and for some reason Emily failed, the guy would beat him senseless, maybe even kill him. Ben knew this, deep down inside himself, where he hid the pain inflicted on him and the mountain of fear that made him question his every move, his every word. Better not to try at all than to try and fail-this he knew, no matter what arguments she threw at him. This was a matter of survival. This was not something up for discussion.

They drank the tea in relative quiet; Emily used silence to punish Ben. He was used to it. She had pleaded; she had cried. Recently she had turned to this nudging, expecting Ben to make some offer and sulking when he refused to take the hint. He didn’t want to play along, and yet he loved Emily and didn’t want to let her down. He heard himself say, “I’m not ready.”

“They can protect you,” she said.

“No,” he answered. “You don’t know him.” He could have said Jack needed him. He could have explained that the guy cried alone in the dark. He could have tried to express how utterly convinced he was that Jack would not let him leave under any circumstances-and how he would come looking if he lost Ben to a bunch of social workers. “You don’t know him,” Ben repeated with a dry throat. She hadn’t brought this up in a long time; he wondered why she bothered to try again. She knew perfectly well how he felt.

He was saved from further discussion by the sound of a car in the gravel drive. They both heard it.

“I told you,” Emily said with loving eyes.

Ben smiled at her. They were a team again. They had work to do.

Ben grabbed the hand-held device. Emily tucked the clear plastic earpiece under her dark hair and into her ear. “Check,” he said, into the device, and Emily nodded. He slipped out the back door as Emily went off to answer the doorbell. Midday on a Saturday could mean either a man or a woman. The same time of day during the week would have meant a woman for sure. He moved down the concrete steps and over to the corner of the house, where he edged his eye out just far enough to see down the driveway to the beater yellow Ford Pinto wagon.

“They’re paying me to tell them what they want to hear,” Emily had explained to him a long time ago. “The more we learn, the more we know about them, the closer we come to telling them what they want to hear, the happier they are, the more they keep coming back.” It made sense to Ben. He had no problem with spying on them. To him it was a game. It was fun. And he knew he was good at it, and it pleased him to be good-really good-at something. Emily said that someday he would make one hell of a cop.

He heard the front door thump shut and went right to work. He walked briskly to the car, glanced once at the front door to make sure the driver was indeed inside for a reading, and began his assessment. The sticker on the windshield was an employee parking permit for the U. There were three of them, all different colors, different years. Looking through the passenger’s side window he spotted a Victoria’s Secret catalog addressed to a Wendy Davis at a street address that placed her about a mile north of Green Lake. On the floor were two mashed candy boxes for SourBoys. In the back seat, a baby’s safety seat was strapped in facing backward, looking at a rusted dog guard wire wall that sequestered the empty rear area from the front of the car.

He glanced again at the house, lifted the walkie-talkie, carefully checking the volume knob, and, bringing his lips close, spoke the woman’s name clearly-“Wendy Davis”-followed by a description of the cluttered condition of the car’s interior, the fact that it was an old beat-up Ford, the presence of a child’s seat, and the existence of candy boxes indicating the likelihood of an older child as well. “Hold it,” he said, noticing the newspaper wedged between the plastic median and the driver’s seat. He came around the vehicle quickly. The paper was folded open to the want ads. A number of apartment rentals were circled. He reported this important find. “She’s house hunting. It’s yesterday’s paper.” He wouldn’t open the car door, no matter how tempted; that was against the law and could get Emily into serious trouble, which would ruin everything. He wondered if some of the employment want ads were circled as well, but he would never know.

Bingo! he thought, as he caught sight of the two passport-size color photos stuck into the plastic by the car’s speedometer. One was of a baby boy, the other of an older boy, perhaps five years old. He reported this, as well as the fact that the woman smoked Marlboro Lights and drank cans of decaffeinated Diet Coke. “Maybe religious,” he added, noticing the small black cross that hung from the rearview mirror. He chastised himself for not noticing this right away. Sometimes he missed the obvious stuff in his determination to see absolutely everything. The challenge was to build a life out of a car’s interior. Some people made it easier than others.

This had been a pretty good haul. He returned by the back door into the kitchen. Soft New Age music purred from the other room, played in part to cover any chance of a customer hearing the earpiece: xylophone, flute, and guitar. A far cry from the Springsteen that Jack played when he was working the girls in his bedroom. “Born to Run” was what he always started with. If he was really drunk, he played air guitar along with the record and shouted his tone-deaf melodies, believing he was actually singing. Ben hated him. He had never hated anything or anyone before Jack’s arrival on the scene.

He heard Emily’s voice cut through the soft patter of the music as she told her customer, “I’m getting an image of a problem … a worry … a decision, perhaps ….”

“Yes!” the unseen woman gasped in astonishment.

“And one … no, two boys. Children.”

“Oh, my God!” the woman exclaimed.

“Your children?”

“Yeah! I can’t believe-”

“An infant …”

“Charles. Charlie,” Wendy Davis said.

“And the other is older-what? — four or five?”

“Harry! Just turned five.”

“You’re concerned for them,” the fortune teller said.

“Yeah.”

“I see suitcases … cardboard boxes…. Moving, are we?”

The customer released an audible gasp. “Oh, my gosh,” she said. “You’re for real!” She chuckled, sounding giddy. “I’m sorry. Of course you’re for real. I only meant that … I don’t know … it’s just that-” she laughed again-“I mean, a psychic and all…. Oh, my gosh. How did you …? But of course … I can’t believe this!”

“Looking for a new place to live,” Emily said patiently. “Concerned for the children over the move. You live near a lake-”

“Green Lake,” the woman shouted-shouted! — enthusiastically. “Yes! Yes!” she continued, sounding like one of the guy’s bedroom partners on the way to a high-pitched scream. “I can’t believe this!”

Ben felt proud that he had done such a good job. Sometimes the car turned out to be borrowed and the session a complete disaster; those customers rarely returned. But this one would be back, he felt certain of it. Emily would be thrilled, and he lived for her praise.

The customer stayed longer than the fifteen minutes promised her for her ten dollars. This upped Emily’s fee to twenty, but there weren’t any complaints. Judging by her expression as she left, Ben believed Wendy Davis was noticeably happier, which made him feel good. This was Emily’s stated goal. She only added her ominous warnings at the end of the session to keep the customer returning. “I see something darker in the near future” was her typical line. Something about work, or the family, or health-those were the real showstoppers, the live worm on the end of the hook that proved irresistible. And like a hairdresser or a doctor, Emily kept an appointment book. She could “fit you in” if you were lucky. Every one of her customers was lucky.

“You need something to eat,” she announced, as she entered the kitchen. One of Emily’s passions was food; she seemed to him to always be around the refrigerator, inspecting its contents. “You’re far too skinny.”

“I’m twelve years old,” Ben declared. He used this argument on Jack, but to mixed results.

“Too skinny,” she repeated. “I’ve got some pork loin for you,” she exclaimed. “My Aunt Bernice’s recipe. Marinated in lemon juice, oregano, salt, and pepper…. Do you like garlic? Yeah, you do,” she answered rhetorically. “Olive oil.” She pulled the thing out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter. It was just a tube of pink meat with soggy green specks all over it. It looked disgusting. “Don’t worry,” she said, catching his expression, “it’s better than it looks.”

An hour later they were eating lunch at her kitchen table. He liked the mashed potatoes most of all. “We can have the leftovers for dinner,” she said, talking with her mouth full of food. If he did it she screamed at him, but she did it all the time. He liked Emily-loved her, maybe-but he didn’t understand her. Not completely.

He was glad she mentioned dinner, because it meant he didn’t have to think about going there. Jack would leave for the bar by seven; it would be safe to go back then. If he was lucky, Emily would ask him to sleep over. She let him do this about twice a week. Not once had Jack asked him about where he went or where he stayed-his only complaint would be if a chore didn’t get done, and those complaints were often of the physical variety, so Ben kept up on the chores.

“It’s even better as a leftover,” she promised. She drank pink wine that she poured from a paper box in the fridge. After lunch they did the dishes together. Emily put on some more lipstick and said she was going outside to “feed the cat.” The cat would have been more correctly named Marlboro, but she pretended Ben didn’t know this.

She made Ben read to her as she sat in her favorite chair, and she fell asleep with a smile on her face. The nap lasted about twenty minutes, at which point Ben heard a car pull in the driveway.

“Another one,” he said, gently shaking her by the upper arm. She was softer than anything, anyone, he had ever touched. She was magical. Special. He’d seen her know things that no one could ever possibly know. It didn’t happen all the time, but when it did there was no explaining it. She had a power. “A gift,” she called it. But it was more than that. It was a vision, an ability to see ahead, like a dream but real. Magic.

“A gal’s got to earn a living,” she said, coming out of the chair and stroking the wrinkles out of her clothes. She patted Ben on the head affectionately. “Your reading’s getting better,” she said. “You might work out after all,” she teased. “I might keep you yet.”

Ben waited for the car to pull up and the engine to go quiet. Then he slipped out back, prepared to do his job.